Good Article! Alfred Hitchcock Explains James Comey, the Media and 2016’s ‘MacGuffin’

Alfred Hitchcock Explains James Comey, the Media and 2016's 'MacGuffin'

Neal Gabler

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2016 Elections

by Neal Gabler | November 3, 2016 

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— from Moyers & Company

It is impossible to count the myriad ways in which the media botched FBI Director James Comey's Friday announcement that the agency had found a cache of emails that seemingly (a key word) pertain to Hillary Clinton's use of a private server. I heard the news via CNN at an airport while waiting to board a plane. No one needs to be told that CNN is a journalistic disgrace – a textbook case of the decline of American media, all the more depressing because, unlike Fox News and MSNBC, it purports to be a real news organization. Instead, it is a ratings machine, and it is beyond contemptible.

So what I heard was Wolf Blitzer in his customary tizzy, as if Pearl Harbor had just been attacked, breathlessly ballyhooing Comey's missive to Congress and asking what seemed to be an endless queue of talking heads to weigh in on what is now routinely called a "bombshell." This too is a textbook example of media practice. In the movies, bombast has replaced narrative. The last half-hour of every blockbuster is obligatory and generic: noise, lots and lots and lots of noise, and a gazillion special effects until any vestige of story evaporates and your head throbs. Cable has done something similar with news. It is all pitch, no content. The hysteria can transform anything into a drama, which is precisely cable's intention.

This has been true of the Clinton emails since the beginning. It was always something of a hoax – a new chapter for a hungry media juicing its audience. Not one in a hundred voters can tell you the awful crime Clinton was supposed to have committed or why it matters. Not one in a hundred – and I would include journalists – have any idea of what really went down with these emails, as I discussed in an earlier post that highlighted the one reporter, Garrett M. Graff of Politico, who actually did something it appears no other reporter thought of doing: read the FBI's summary account of the investigation.

In effect, then, the Clinton emails have always been what the great film director Alfred Hitchcock called a "MacGuffin," which Hitchcock described as the "device, the gimmick, if you will, that sets the plot in motion." And he continued: "It doesn't matter what it is. And the logicians are wrong in trying to figure out the truth of a MacGuffin, since it's beside the point. The only thing that really matters is that in the picture, the plans, documents, or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they're of no importance whatever."

It takes Alfred Hitchcock to reveal the secret of the emails as well as the basic operating principle of our political media. To the media, the emails are the primary plot device. In reality, they mean nothing. And I should add this: Should Donald Trump win this election, and he very well might now, historians 50 years from now will be scratching their heads over how something so inconsequential as a private email server could possibly have swayed the election. Emails! Really! How do we explain a MacGuffin overtaking our politics?

The thing is that while the media have been obsessing over the MacGuffin, they have missed entirely the real story – the story that historians will examine and ponder. Oddly enough, it was arguably one of the world's worst newspapers, England's right-wing Daily Mail tabloid, which is about ten notches below our own New York Post, which is ten notches below any real newspaper, that broke the deeper story.

The Daily Mail reported that FBI agents were incensed over Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton (so, says the paper, was Comey's wife) and many submitted resignations in protest. Even when real newspapers finally caught up with this angle, they soft-peddled the significance of the nation's primary investigative agency being an in-house right-wing force that was determined to veer the election toward Trump. The later dump of Bill Clinton documents only underscores the determination of the FBI to turn the election.

That is real and really disturbing news – colossally big news, giant headline news. With his sudden announcement, Comey may or may not have been trying to pacify the GOP, which would have been bad enough. It does appear he was trying to raise morale among the gestapo at his own agency by aiding Trump. And let's be clear: He knew he was aiding Trump.

That the media have largely ignored this aspect is both astonishing and depressing. The New York Times very delicately compared Comey to the late J. Edgar Hoover, who used the agency for his own devices, largely to settle personal grievances and advance his right-wing agenda. (And I mean very delicately. The media have always treated Comey as Diogenes.)

But then the media are so caught up in their own hysteria over emails, they don't have distance to view the big story. And when they aren't preoccupied with the emails, they are preoccupied with how Comey's revelation, seemingly in violation of Justice Department protocols and the Hatch Act, will affect the election. So you go from the MacGuffin to the horse race without ever having to engage anything substantive.

You could say that Comey brilliantly played the media for his own benefit, knowing that they couldn't resist and certainly wouldn't investigate a new plot twist. Hitch knew the difference between an insubstantial MacGuffin and something that was important. Comey realized that the media don't. Their confusion, along with their unwillingness to out the FBI and its seemingly alt-right agenda, could wind up being the decisive element in this election. It is the campaign equivalent of that deafening superhero movie climax – all noise, no sense.
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Neuroscientist: Trump's Vindictive Nature Would Him Make a Very Dangerous President

After viewing so many months of Donald Trump and hearing his outrageous, angry threats of vengeance against others, you wouldn't think ANY voter would need to be told the following truths about him and his narcissistic, misogynistic, sociopathic behavior. Yet we see our President Obama, in his speeches for Clinton, having to denounce Trump's obnoxious statements against women, Muslims, Mexicans, and blacks -- and actually spell out the obvious to ignorant Trump supporters: that this man is absolutely unfit to be President (or even to pose as a human being).  And STILL Trump's supporters are determined to vote for him and bring complete chaos to our country and the world.  This is real proof of that saying, "There's no cure for Stupid."

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/donald-trumps-vindictiveness-would-make-him-a-dangerous-president/

Neuroscientist:  Trump's Vindictive Nature Would Him Make a Very Dangerous President

By Robert Azarian

While he's dropped clues throughout his entire presidential campaign, the full extent of Donald Trump's vindictive nature has only been revealed recently. Not only does his obsession with revenge provide more evidence for the widely held belief that he is a narcissist, it further suggests that Trump has a psychological profile that could make him a very dangerous world leader. In fact, research has shown that people who score high on measures of vengeance—the intense desire to inflict harm on another person in order to 'get even' after a perceived injury or insult—typically lack empathy, possess uncontrollable anger, and are emotionally unstable.

To describe Trump as a man who holds grudges would be a vast understatement.  Last month in a blog post, the British billionaire and founder of the Virgin group, Richard Branson, briefly described his first encounter with Donald, something he called extraordinarily bizarre. At a one-on-one business lunch that occurred sometime in the distant past, rather than discussing entrepreneurship or ways to help the world, Trump spent the entire time explaining how he intended to dedicate the rest of his life to ruining the lives of five people who refused to help him after his company filed for bankruptcy.

Also last month, during a public appearance, Trump vowed to sue all 12 women who have recently accused him of sexual misconduct as soon as the election is over—which might seem not so unreasonable had he not explicitly bragged about such behavior in 2005. But Trump didn't stop there. He threatened to sue The New York Times for publishing the women's stories, and if his lawsuit history tells us anything, it's that these are unlikely to be just empty promises. And these examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

USA Today found that Trump has been involved in over 3,500 legal actions in the last 30 years, many of which were cases filed by him. As reported by The Atlantic in the article, "The Lawsuits of Donald Trump," over the last decade the billionaire has sued "a book author, a MISS USA contestant, a comedian, and global financial institutions." That comedian was actually HBO talk show host Bill Maher, who promised to give Trump $5 million if he could provide proof that his father was not an orangutan. Luckily for Maher, the case was ultimately dismissed. Regardless, if you think that Donald's vindictiveness is superficial, with lawsuit threats being simply how he 'lets off steam,' his track record clearly shows otherwise.

Given the anecdotal and objective evidence, there's just no doubt that Donald is an extremely vengeful person, and it is unlikely that even the most loyal Trump supporter would deny that. In fact, given the intense hatred toward the Obama administration and the U.S. government felt by your average Trump enthusiast, Donald's ambition to tear down the establishment that has continuously mocked him is likely a main reason why they love him.

Psychology research shows that vindictiveness is strongly correlated with narcissism, a personality trait that countless psychologists say Trump shows all the signs of having. Studies have also found that those who seek revenge are often very energetic and have dominant personalities. Further, vengeful people often seek powerful positions that allow them to inflict what they see as well-deserved hurt on their enemies. That pretty much describes Trump to a T.

What might be the most troubling aspect of a vindictive president is the severe lack of empathy. Since empathy is the ability to see events from another's perspective, and to share their experiences and emotions, it is an essential feature for a president who cares about the people, as the overwhelming majority of them do not live a life anything like his. Minorities, as well as the poor, elderly, and disabled, would all be negatively affected by an unempathetic leader. To make matters worse, vengefulness is strongly associated with anger and aggression, which can go unchecked with empathy deficits, resulting in—for example—brutal military decisions made with no regard for civilian lives abroad.

Another serious drawback of a vengeful president is that they would spend so much time and effort getting even that they would not have time to actually do the jobs that presidents must do. Under a Trump presidency, many important duties—like working with Congress on the budget and running the armed forces—would either be neglected or allocated to others while he plots and executes his revenge.

We can be sure that if Donald Trump becomes president, he will be dedicating a substantial amount of time to figuring out some sort of way to punish the media, which he feels has treated him very unfairly during the election cycle. In an episode of The Daily Show that aired last week, Dana Bash, a journalist and CNN reporter, described to Trevor Noah the chilling way Trump already directs anger and aggression toward the media at his rallies:

"There is nothing as jarring as being in the pen—because the press has to be in a pen at these rallies, for security and for other reasons—and there are thousands of people between you and the candidate. And it's a huge crowd. So Donald Trump will say, "Look at those people, they are horrible. They are scumbags. They are the worst people. They're so dishonest." And all of a sudden, in unison, every single one of the people will turn around and stare at us, and it's very creepy and scary—it really is."

What's even scarier is imagining what orders he'd give people and how strongly they'd respond if he were actually President of the United States. And how could citizens be arrested and held in jail for following the president's orders?

We can also bet that Trump would immediately devote much of his limited resources into destroying every bit of Obama's legacy, regardless of whether or not it would hurt the country. It would serve as payback for the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, where Barack Obama roasted Trump with clever zinger after zinger. Although the jokes were light-hearted and typical of the event, Trump's largely stone-faced reaction showed that he likely felt humiliated, and there's absolutely nothing that infuriates The Donald more than that. Even if Trump knew for sure that fixing Obamacare would be easier and less costly than starting from scratch, he would still tear it down just out of spite. He's already promised to do this. A leader that operates like that is dangerous for the country because they are more concerned with revenge than the welfare of citizens.

While it might seem obvious that as president Trump would put effort into getting back at the Clintons and other Democrats, it is more likely that he will have his vengeful eyes directed at his own party. With the Clintons defeated, he'd be more motivated to focus on settling old scores with Republicans like Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who went against tradition by refusing to show support or enthusiasm for the party's nominee. This greatly embarrassed and upset Trump, who has been attacking Ryan ever since. Ryan is just one of many "establishment Republicans" who expressed disapproval of Trump and are likely to now be on his disloyal list. Because that list is one that Donald takes very seriously, many Republican politicians have as much reason to fear a Trump presidency as Democrats do. This time around they would be wise to vote blue, as their careers and future may depend on it.

But a vindictive president is the biggest liability when it comes to the world stage. It is here where a vengeful Trump has the potential to do the most damage. It is a fact that the U.S. is despised by a number of nations with formidable military force, and that is not going to change no matter who is elected president this November. If it is Trump, it is only a matter of time before the brash billionaire feels he has been deeply insulted or disrespected by another world leader. And since research shows that vengeful responses are generally greater in force than their provocation, we could easily find ourselves in a quickly escalating conflict with North Korea, Iran, China, or Russia. Sure, there may be a budding bromance between Vladimir Putin and Donald right now, but just like Trump's friendship with Ted Cruz, a falling out is inevitable. And when that occurs, we can again expect it to get really ugly really quick.

Trump expects flattery, and that's something he's just not going to get a lot of as President of the United States. As a result, many of his actions and decisions will be driven by aggression and vengeance, which have the power to override logic and reason. Will he try to order the people to stand up and cause chaos if Congress or the Supreme Court makes a decision he doesn't like? Would he get us unengaged in a nuclear war if he's mocked and ridiculed by a foreign nation? We should all hope that these are questions that we'll never know the answers to.

Robert Azarian is a neuroscientist affiliated with George Mason University and a science writer.

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Excellent Column: What is REAL Relating?

Nice for a change to read something like this that bypasses the head and gets to the heart:

WHAT IS REAL RELATING?  MARTIN BUBER HAS THE ANSWER

By David Brooks

If America were a marriage we'd need therapy.

There has been so much bad communication over the past year: people talking in warring monologues past each other, ignoring the facts and using lazy stereotypes like "elites" and "Trumpeans" to reduce complex individuals into simplistic categories. Meanwhile, our main candidates are poor connectors. We've got the self-enclosed narcissism of Donald Trump and, to a lesser degree, the mistrustful defensiveness of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

As an antidote for all this, I've been reading the work of Martin Buber, the early 20th century Jewish theologian who dedicated his career to understanding deep intimacy. Buber is famous for the distinction between I-It relationships and I-Thou relationships.

I-It relationships come in two varieties.

Some are strictly utilitarian. You're exchanging information in order to do some practical thing, like getting your taxes done.

But other I-It relationships are truncated versions of what should be deep relationships. You're with a friend, colleague, spouse or neighbor, but you're not really bringing your whole self to that encounter. You're fearful, closed or withdrawn — objectifying her, talking at her, offering only a shallow piece of yourself and seeing only the shallow piece of her.

I-Thou relationships, on the other hand, are personal, direct, dialogical — nothing is held back. A Thou relationship exists when two or more people are totally immersed in their situation, when deep calls to deep, when they are offering up themselves and embracing the other in some total, unselfconscious way, when they are involved in "mutual animated describing."

A doctor has an I-It relationship with a patient when he treats him as a machine in need of repair. But Peter DeMarco described an I-Thou relationship in a letter to the doctors and nurses who cared for his dying wife, which was published in The Times:

"How many times did you hug me and console me when I fell to pieces, or ask about Laura's life and the person she was, taking the time to look at her photos or read the things I'd written about her? How many times did you deliver bad news with compassionate words, and sadness in your eyes?"

In our culture we use phrases like finding oneself, finding your passion, loving yourself so you can love others. But Buber argued that it's nonsensical to think of the self in isolation. The I only exists in relation to some other.

"The development of the soul in the child is inextricably bound up with that of the longing for the Thou," he wrote. All through life, the self is emerging out of some dialogue, either a cold stifling one or a rich complete one: "All real living is meeting."

You can't intentionally command I-Thou moments into being. You can only be open to them and provide fertile soil.

Some people go through life with a detached posture, trying to self-differentiate themselves and be more sophisticated than others. Those people tend to have mechanical relationships. Their feelings are self-enclosed. They don't get to experience the Thou.

Others adopt a guard-down posture that is openhearted and open-minded. They regard others as unique persons and not objects. They have histories in which trust and vulnerability are rewarded.

Such people experience moments of genuine dialogue. Buber described genuine dialogue as a sort of social flow. Teachers and students are learning with each other. An audience and an artist are lost in a performance.

These moments don't last. It is the "exalted melancholy of our fate" that Thou moments always fade back into It moments. But a world has been built during such intense moments. A binding cord has been strengthened. The person who has experienced the Thou has been thickened and come closer to wholeness.

Buber's writing reminds us to be intentional and brave about relationships. But it also has communal and political implications. Some organizations and leaders nurture openhearted bonds. Such communities usually began, Buber wrote, with some sacred Thou moment — like the Exodus story for the Jews or the revolutionary struggles of the early Americans. Leaders connect current problems to that "living effective center" and set the table for situations of caring and trust.

Buber's story is also apt because he overcame betrayal to come to a posture of trust. When he was a small boy, his mother eloped with an Army officer and wasn't seen for 30 years. But he still had the courage to throw himself wholly in with his wife, Paula. Their marriage became a living example of a true and equal Thou.

Today, America is certainly awash in distrust. So many people tell stories of betrayal. So many leaders (Trump) model combativeness, isolation and distrust. But the only way we get beyond depressing years like this one is at the level of intimacy: if Americans reconnect with the living center of the national story and they rebuild Thous at every level.

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I couldn't agree more with John Oliver! Especially his last remark

John Oliver is downright frustrated.

There's lots he'd like to talk about on HBO's "Last Week Tonight," but he was forced to once again discuss the election after FBI Director James Comey wrote a letter to Congress about a new line of inquiry into Hillary Clinton's emails. 

"If this shitty development in a shitty campaign season were not grim enough, there is also the matter of where this latest problem came from," Oliver said. 

That would be former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner.   

"It seems Anthony Weiner is forcing the nation to re-litigate the entire email controversy and putting Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the presidency in serious danger," Oliver said. "Carlos Danger!"

Oliver described the FBI's announcement as the equivalent of a mystery box.

"And like the box from the end of 'Seven,' it could contain anything from nothing to Gwyneth Paltrow's head," he said. "Although it almost definitely contains Anthony Weiner's penis." 

Oliver thought we had reached beyond rock bottom when Donald Trump falsely accused former Miss Universe Alicia Machado of having a sex tape. But now we're way beyond even that, he said. 

"We have burrowed through not just rock bottom, but through the core of the earth, and we've come bursting out the other side, startling kangaroos, and we're currently hurtling toward outer space where there is no up, down, light, or darkness ― just an endless void in which death comes as sweet, sweet relief. Please let this thing be over soon!"

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Michelle Obama -- so far above Trump, she is unassailable

Michelle Obama has proven herself to be an honored and greatly respected First Lady. She is an impressively beautiful role model for all women and young girls.  The Obamas have gone high through eight long years of the Republicans going low, lower and lowest in attempts to bring them down with shameful ridicule.  They have ridden high over the gutter politics and the racist bigots who have criticized them and tried to take them down with jeering, sniping e-mails. In their unsuccessful attempts to humiliate the Obamas, their critics have managed only to reveal their own contemptible, narrow-minded prejudices and to dirty themselves in the process.  The Obamas, in contrast to the GOP Presidential nominee, have shown themselves to be the Best of the Best.  Michelle Obama is someone held in such high regard by Americans that Trump doesn't dare go near her name.  She and her husband and children remain far above Trump and his Alt-Right ilk, as if they live in a different universe from Trump and his supporters (which they do!).

WHY TRUMP ISN'T GOING AFTER MICHELLE OBAMA

ABC NEWS

Amid the din and rancor of an angry election, First Lady Michelle Obama managed to break through this week with a crisp message that will be particularly hard for political opponents to answer.

"A candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women," Mrs. Obama said Thursday. "Let's be very clear: Strong men, strong men -- men who are truly role models -- don't need to put down women to make themselves to feel powerful."

The first lady never mentioned Donald Trump's name. Even so, suggesting that Trump's conduct means he can't be counted among "strong men" tests the limits of her vow to "go high" when the other side goes low.

The speech, along her extensive campaign travel on behalf of Hillary Clinton, puts at risk the first lady's public standing, which has delivered her approval ratings far beyond those who are typically associated with the daily grind of politics.

Yet Mrs. Obama managed to deliver her message in a way that not only resonated as a major campaign moment, but will also prove nearly impossible for Trump and his allies to answer.

Asked in a television interview Friday morning to respond to her, Trump's running mate professed to not understand her critique fully enough to even have a rejoinder.

"I have a lot of respect for the first lady and the job she has done for the American people over the last seven and a half years. But I don't understand the basis of her claim," Mike Pence said on CBS.

Obama managed to do something that few others -- not elder GOP statesmen, not gold-star families or prisoners of war, not federal judges, not even the pope himself -- have accomplished. She has, at least for now, managed to silence Trump and his campaign.

The reasons why get at what's made the first lady a unique political voice in these divided times. She has cultivated image as her husband's partner, yet somehow not dirtied by his political wars.

When the first lady spoke Thursday in New Hampshire, the campaign wasn't about decades-old groping allegations, or hacked emails, or even the very real policy differences between the two major-party candidates that rarely surface in discussion anyway.

Michelle Obama framed her argument around the kind of leader the nation wants for the kind of country it strives to have. She made the case personal, speaking as a mom and a woman with "strong men" in her life, in a way that crosses party and gender lines.

"I can't stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn't have predicted," Obama said, clearly referencing the allegations against Trump.

She lent her voice to a chorus of Democrats and even Republicans who are making the stand against Trump about something bigger than politics.

"This is not normal. This is not politics as usual," she said. "This is disgraceful. It is intolerable."

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Good stress-coping advice for a healthier heart and better sleep

People Who Embrace This Perspective Sleep Better and Have a Healthier Heart Want to be better able to cope with stress and have less anxiety and more positive emotions? Emphasizing these strategies may help improve your blood sugar, inflammatory and immune systems, stress and reproductive hormones, blood pressure and heart rhythms, and even your brain neurotransmitters.

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People like me and my friends who have known about extraterrestrial information for many years now are happy about these leaked e-mails on the subject.  We think it's way past time for this information to be made public.

The truth is that extraterrestrials have been visiting us and working with world governments for many decades.  Several Presidents, including Eisenhower and Reagan, wanted to give this news to the public but were overruled by those who fear that the undeveloped consciousness of millions of Earth humans, especially that of the more conservative/religious types, is not ready for this revelation.  After seeing how many of this type are Trump voters in America and are those who voted for Brexit in the UK, I understand the concerns. 

Can you imagine the paranoid response of gun-toting evangelicals and white supremacist neo-Nazis in finding out we are not alone in the universe -- and that we are not the "greatest" and the "smartest"?  Scary to contemplate.  Just look at how willing they (along with Trump) are to hate any fellow Earth humans whom they consider to be "different" from themselves (different skin color, different religious beliefs, different sexual preference, etc., etc.).  At least half (and probably far more than that) of the people on Earth are still in nursery school, as concerns their understanding of life, the universe and our true nature and origins.  Still, the following leaked e-mails give some indication of the truth of the ET matter.

Intelligent people with open minds will hear this information as an introduction to what is actually true about ourselves and the universe. I think we Earth humans are slated to expand our consciousness in a much quicker manner than has been evidenced up till now.  Expanding ourselves to be global citizens is the first step -- and then, when ready, we can move on to the galactic level.  If interested, please read on:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-emails-aliens_us_57fd14b4e4b068ecb5e1eb1f?section=&

Leaked Emails Reveal Former Astronaut Wanted To Meet With Obama Official About Alien Life

Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell was outspoken about his beliefs around extraterrestrial life forms.

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Good interview with Steve Schmidt, Republican campaign manager for John McCain, who calls Trump's campaign "kamikaze"

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/steve-schmidt-just-opened-a-massive-can-of-whoop-ass-on-desperate-trumps-kamikaze-campaign/

Steve defends John McCain against Trump's statement, "I wouldn't want to be in a foxhole with McCain."

I am not politically in accord with John McCain but I do recognize him as a war hero, something Trump does not.  I don't understand how any Republican (and especially armed service veterans) can vote for this FrankenTrump low-consciousness lowlife who isn't worthy to shine McCain's shoes, let alone be privileged to be in a foxhole with him.

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Good New Yorker article on Leonard Cohen

Leonard's voice/music has been my favorite for many years...This article tells about his life as it is progressed through the years and as it is now:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker

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Robert Reich: WISHFUL THINKING

I'm with HIM!!! (~.~) Sure hope all the things on his wishful thinking list come to pass!

Wishful Thinking: First Hundred Days after November 8

by Robert Reich | October 9, 2016 - 6:15am

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— from Robert Reich's Blog

1. Hillary Clinton is elected President.

2. Democrats take over the Senate, and reduce the Republican margin in the House to just 3 votes.

3. Elizabeth Warren announces she'll challenge Hillary in the 2020 Democratic primaries if Hillary isn't sufficiently progressive and bold during her first term.

4. The Democratic National Committee issues new rules eliminating "superdelegates" and requiring open primaries.

5. In her inaugural address, Hillary Clinton promises to "wrest back control of our democracy and economy from the moneyed interests that have taken over both."

6. President Hillary Clinton nominates Barack Obama to the Supreme Court, who immediately pledges to reverse "Citizens United." Senate Democrats make a rule change that allows Obama to be confirmed with 51 Senate votes. He is.

7. President Clinton nominates Bernie Sanders for Treasury Secretary and Michelle Obama for Attorney General. Both are immediately confirmed.

8. The chairman of the Republican Party officially repudiates Donald Trump, saying "shame on us for having nominated him." Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Pence appear in a joint news conference in which they apologize for having ever supported Trump.

9. Disgraced and with his brand in tatters, the value of Trump's properties drops 80 percent. His creditors demand that his personal assets – homes, planes, furniture, all he possesses – be liquidated to pay his bills.

10. Rupert Murdoch fires Sean Hannity from Fox News.
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REPUBLICANS: YOU KNEW WHO TRUMP WAS WHEN YOU NOMINATED HIM

YOU KNEW

By Jeffery Young

You knew. You all knew. You knew the whole time who and what Donald Trump is.

Mike Pence. Paul Ryan. Mitch McConnell. Ted Cruz. Chris Christie. Newt Gingrich. Orrin Hatch. John McCain. Marco Rubio. Virtually all of you. 

You heard every terrible thing he said. You watched every inexcusable thing he did. You knew Trump is a race-baiting, xenophobic, misogynistic, authoritarian con man. You knew about his insatiable appetite for power, his bottomless need for affirmation, his dangerous impulsiveness and uncontrollable temper. You knew he was a huckster who ruined businesses and lives. You knew he debased your party, and you personally. You knew.

You knew he waged a racist campaign against the president's legitimacy. You knew he called immigrants rapists. You knew he advocated forbidding Muslims from American soil. You knew he said a federal judge wasn't qualified becauseMexican blood flowed through his veins. You knew he besmirched the parents of a dead soldier. You knew he mocked prisoners of war. You knew he courted white supremacists. You knew he admires dictators. You knew he incited violence. You knew he lies ― blatantly, shamelessly, ceaselessly.

You knew all of that, and you asked Americans to elect him president anyway. Shame on you. You knew.

Your condemnations are and have always been empty. Your sudden rush to abandon Trump ― after what's merely the most recently uncovered manifestation of his hatred for women ― is motivated by the same venal cowardice that led you to support him in the first place.

You knew Hillary Clinton isn't the monstrous caricature you spent decades depicting. You knew she is ― like each and every one of you ― an ordinary politician, in all the ways that word has positive and negative connotations. You knew she would govern in a perfectly normal way.

You knew this, but you told voters she was more dangerous than Trump. More evil. A greater threat to the republic. And this, after so many of you spent the presidential primary campaign warning the U.S. that Trump is exactly who he appears to be. But you fell in line. You knew, and you endorsed him anyway.

You did all of this in service of ideology. You did this because you believe Trump will enact the policies you favor to allow businesses to pump more pollution into our air and water, to take away food and medicine from the neediest among us, to disenfranchise minority voters, to slash taxes for the rich.

Your voters elevated Trump nearly to the White House, and he may yet make it there, in spite of everything. They did so because you have primed them for Trump for more than half a century. Half a century of barely concealed appeals to racism, of fomenting fear and hatred and coaxing the worst instincts out of enough voters to gain power. Years of nurturing ― on AM radio and cable TV and the internet ― a propaganda machine that encourages ignorance, mistrust and anger.

You have lost control of the golem you created.  

You made promises you knew you couldn't keep, and your voters finally lost faith in you. Now, they're turning on you.

They follow a man who doesn't even share your beliefs. You're learning just how little those voters cared about conservatism and how very much they cared about stomping their boots on the throats of people who don't look like them or love like them or think like them. You made this possible by making villains out of African-Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ people, the poor.

When this is all over, you may win your own re-elections. You may retain control of Congress and of governors mansions, state legislatures, county councils and school boards all across the nation. You may sigh in relief that you survived. You may even ― and not terribly long from now ― regain the presidency and resume carrying out your agenda. Your own careers may be successful. 

But history will condemn you. History won't forget your callowness. Because you knew.

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Humorous moment on FOX news this morning

The long-haired, long-legged Fox women with short skirts and high, high heels were all sitting with legs crossed to reveal their thighs, discussing Trump and his main supporters in Ohio.  They obviously had been coached not to use the term "uneducated" but instead to say, "white men who don't have a college degree."  As one of the women was reading from her notes, she unintentionally started to say "the uned...." and quickly switched to "white men without a college degree."  It's also obvious that the women on FOX are uncomfortable having to support Trump and they do it with very little expression and no enthusiasm.  I would bet a lot of money that when they enter the voting booth, their votes will NOT be for Trump.

As for the uneducated white men who are flocking in droves to support Trump, he has already declared his love for them when he happily declared at one rally, "I love the poorly educated!"  And well he should, because they make up the majority of his Pied Piper followers, with just a very few of more intelligent Republicans strewn here and there among their number (and why those brighter people are still there with the ugly clown in that very dark circus tent I have never been able to figure out!) 

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Icarus Trump and the Long Fall

Not that any of Trump's supporters care that he has been stiffing little people like them for decades -- hard-working people who did the jobs he hired them to do and then were refused pay by the FrankenTrump monster. As Republican right wingers tend to do, they probably figure, "Well, it wasn't ME he stiffed. They should have been more careful of the way they conduct their business." As long as it doesn't affect them or their family, they are OK with whatever is done out there in the world where Trump conducts HIS business.  Of course, Trump had a good reason for not paying the little people whose services he used.  Read about his reason in this excerpt from the article I've included in toto below:

"Trump is notorious for stiffing contractors who provide services for him. There are dozens of lawsuits pending against him for just that, and more stories appear every day. Trump even stiffed the caterer who successfully managed his wedding to Marla Maples. His pattern in this was as simple as it was sinister: "I know you are new at this," he is alleged to have said, "and when you tell people you catered my wedding, you will get more business than you could ever dream of. So I am doing you a favor. And when I do favors, I don't pay. End of discussion."

"When threatened with a lawsuit by those he refused to pay, Trump would tell the aggrieved party to go right ahead; a suit would cost more than the bill in question. One wonders if there is an enterprising lawyer out there willing to pull all these people together into a class-action lawsuit against Trump. Even better, perhaps an eager prosecutor could put together a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act case against him. This isn't a one-off here and there; it is a years-long pattern of fraud that has left a long trail of very angry, financially damaged people in its wake."

Mr. Law and Order indeed.

Icarus J. Trump and the Long Fall

by William Rivers Pitt | October 4, 2016 - 8:37am

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— from Truthout

"There are 8 million stories in the Naked City," intoned the narrator of the 1948 film noir masterpiece of the same name. The same can be said for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Actually, 8 million stories may be too low a number. Take this past Friday, for example. After a week of thrashing about trying to pretend Secretary Hillary Clinton didn't eat his lunch during Monday's debate, Trump got hold of his phone and went on an all-night Twitter rampage. A post at 10:16 pm Thursday night was followed by subsequent Friday morning screeds at 3:20 am, 5:14 am, 5:19 am and 5:30 am before he trailed off at 8:50 am with one last wail about sources and beauty pageants and sex tapes.

Does the man sleep? Or does he hang upside down in the belfry of Trump Tower like some anthropomorphic orange bat, tweeting madly while his aides try to knock the phone out of his hands with long poles and lobbed fistfuls of old brie? That's just one story. The vast collection of all the others accumulated during this deranged toboggan ride could very well hedge the definition of infinity.

Therein, however, lies the magic of it, the genius, even if it is all completely unintended. Trump is the SUU-11A Gatling mini-gun of politics, capable of laying down 6,000 rounds of ammunition in one minute. The mini-gun can denude a forest with a couple of sweeps of its spinning, fire-spitting barrel. Trump managed to lay the entire corporate "news" media low with the same degree of firepower. He wasn't firing lead, however; he was firing nonsense and bedlam.

A typical week of Trump coverage, only slightly embellished: Last night, Trump tweeted that Clinton intends to sell the Sixth Fleet to Iran as reports swirled that he used money from his charitable foundation to pay for a giant golden calf made of hairs taken from his own comb, but here's some breaking news about yet another caterer he stiffed on a job while tweeting his theories on how President Obama was born on Neptune and flew here like Superman, but is so selfish that he won't use his superpowers to destroy ISIS … what's that, Bob? Trump bribed an attorney general and ran a fake college and solicited campaign donations from foreign leaders and is in bed with Russian President Vladmir Putin and violated the Cuba embargo and his money-laundering charity foundation isn't allowed to collect donations and he lost a billion dollars while maybe paying no taxes? Oh, I give up. Let's talk about Clinton's health for a week after we check in on the Pitt-Jolie divorce.

They call the man "Master Troll" for a reason. Every time some supposedly campaign-ending shoe drops, Trump slings six lesser shoes out the window that make the media scatter like geese. Deliberate, or merely a happy accident born of manic self-delusion on the part of this wholly naked emperor? In the end, it doesn't matter. Trump has somehow managed over the last year to make Teflon look like flypaper by comparison. The sheer number of stories has been, amazingly, the rock that gives him shelter.

All that, however, may be coming to a conclusion at speed. Trump and the "news" media may be spending their time on Miss Universe for the moment, but legal officials in a variety of districts are looking long and hard at his highly questionable business practices. The much-ballyhooed Trump Foundation, according to a bombshell report by The Washington Post, lacks the certification required by charities to collect money. Even under the most lenient of circumstances, Trump may get fined and be forced to return all those donations. Dovetail that with the myriad reports of his serial misuse of those charity funds, and suddenly he's got some pretty heavy potential criminal charges staring him dead in the face. He brazenly flouted the embargo against Cuba, another breach of the law, and had his surrogates go on TV to call it no big deal. Yeah, he did it. It's called business, which makes him smart.

Oh, and not for nothing, but Trump is notorious for stiffing contractors who provide services for him. There are dozens of lawsuits pending against him for just that, and more stories appear every day. Trump even stiffed the caterer who successfully managed his wedding to Marla Maples. His pattern in this was as simple as it was sinister: "I know you are new at this," he is alleged to have said, "and when you tell people you catered my wedding, you will get more business than you could ever dream of. So I am doing you a favor. And when I do favors, I don't pay. End of discussion."

When threatened with a lawsuit by those he refused to pay, Trump would tell the aggrieved party to go right ahead; a suit would cost more than the bill in question. One wonders if there is an enterprising lawyer out there willing to pull all these people together into a class-action lawsuit against Trump. Even better, perhaps an eager prosecutor could put together a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act case against him. This isn't a one-off here and there; it is a years-long pattern of fraud that has left a long trail of very angry, financially damaged people in its wake.

Mr. Law and Order indeed.

The ancient Greeks were masterful at telling tales of doom by hubris. Trump calls to mind Icarus, who flew too close to the sun with waxen wings and fell to his death in the sea. It is almost amusing: Had Trump decided not to run for president, it is almost certain that none of these terrible stories would have come to light, and he could have merrily continued practicing the dark art of being a greedy self-centered jerk until his dying day.

Instead, he lurched for the sun, and now his whole empire is under close scrutiny. The scab is off the wound. Even if he wins in November, which is hardly out of the question, that scrutiny won't cease. Donald Trump may wind up being the first president to be impeached before he learns how to use the phone in the Oval Office. I wonder if his kids are worried about their inheritance. I would be. Remember Wile E. Coyote going off the cliff while holding a sign that read, "Was this trip really necessary?" It's fairly certain a number of people associated with the campaign are thinking exactly that … while wondering if they'll actually get paid.

It's a long way down, Donald. Icarus can tell you all about it. Maybe your wings should have been made of sterner stuff. Maybe you should have simply stayed home. Just another story in Hubris City.

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Newest Twitter racist terms of far right wing

So they won't be banned by Twitter, here are the new code words the Trump supporters are using on Twitter in order to keep from being banned.  Most important for all Trump supporters to know so they can continue their bigotry unimpeded by moral codes the rest of us follow.  (I guess they still call themselves "Christians.")

As you can see, the alt-righters now refer to black people as "googles," Jews as "skypes," Latinos as "yahoos," and Asians as "bings." In tribute to Donald Trump Jr., they also refer to Muslims as "skittles," which is the candy that the younger Trump compared to Syrian refugees in an infamous meme he posted.

And of course, they also have derogatory nicknames for members of the LGBT community and for any political ideology that does not match up with their own.

So if you're on Twitter and you see some random person call you a "skype butterfly car salesman," you should know you're being attacked with bigoted code words.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/here-are-the-racist-code-words-trumps-twitter-fans-are-now-using-to-avoid-getting-banned/

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Good article -- sadly, won't be recognized that way by Trump voters

EXCERPT:  If you're inclined to deny statements that the majority know to be true, then Trump's message is appealing. By disputing facts and verifiable research, he validates society's fecklessness faction by speaking to people who, like him, can't be bothered to learn the facts.

Trump's campaign is a carnival of ignorance that would have gone nowhere if more Americans had done some due diligence about his past and his character.

Instead, Trump is living proof of the inexplicable willingness of many Americans to reject factual knowledge.

His campaign arises partly from what Stanford historian Robert N. Proctor has dubbed "agnotology," defined as "culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth."   Trump's agnotology won't work in the real world of international politics, the economy and national security. In office, his merit badge of ignorance would tarnish pretty fast.

TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN AND THE RISE OF WILLFUL IGNORANCE

By Dan Leger

A crowd listens to republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speak at Spooky Nook Sports Complex in Manheim, Pa., Saturday, Oct. 1. (James Robinson/PennLive.com via AP)

It's an unwritten rule of politics and life that we generally don't blame people for their ignorance, at least when it's not their own fault. But we don't respect those who wear ignorance like a merit badge, because they're holding everyone back.

Ignorance is something that shouldn't be learned. But a willful form of it seems to be taking hold out there and it threatens to undermine a lot that is good about our liberal democracies.

This self-inflicted ignorance has produced Donald Trump as its knight in white armor and he campaigns on the ignorance platform. Trump employs knowledge denial in ways that were, until now, unseen in politics. His entire pitch is based on phony factoids.

Trump's big promise is to clamp down on criminal immigrants. Yet there are no credible statistics proving that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans, as Trump claims. Nor is there a credible study proving foreigners take jobs from American workers, but he says that every day too.

Trump would abandon international trade agreements because they're all "bad deals." But while not unanimous, most economists agree that liberalized trade benefits the United States economy and its workers.

Contrary to what Trump says, the U.S. is not a hellscape of poverty and violence. Crime is decreasing and most Americans are better off now than when Barack Obama became president in 2008. Employment, even in manufacturing, is at a record high. Poverty is on the wane.

Trump's lies often have racial overtones, like his multi-year denial that Obama was born in the U.S. Now Trump claims that Hillary Clinton started the rumours. And no, the Chinese did not invent climate change to further some weird goal of theirs.

Trump's campaign is a carnival of ignorance that would have gone nowhere if more Americans had done some due diligence about his past and his character.

Instead, Trump is living proof of the inexplicable willingness of many Americans to reject factual knowledge.

His campaign arises partly from what Stanford historian Robert N. Proctor has dubbed "agnotology," defined as "culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth."

Agnotology works to undermine public confidence in reason and science. The best example might be the tobacco industry's use of knowledge-suppression techniques to weaken public understanding of the link between cigarette smoking and cancer.

Climate science skeptics use pseudo-factual information to blunt scientific warnings about the effects of atmospheric carbon emissions.

Culturally constructed ignorance is at the root of the anti-vaccine movement that endangers the lives of people, especially children, around the world.

And it enables politicians to claim that tax cuts for the rich, another Trump proposal, will create jobs for the working classes when they don't do any such thing.

Admittedly, not everyone is comfortable with science or data. Many people aren't sure what to think when there are uncertainties or conflicting evidence about something as complicated as climate science.

Meanwhile the skeptics get prominent media coverage of their make-believe issues, based on the poorly applied principle of journalistic balance.

That's how Trump graduated from real estate promoter to would-be statesman and presidential candidate. The media felt obliged to give his views an airing because Americans were taking them, and him, seriously.

That was enough to make Trump a factor in media coverage of the presidential campaign.

If you're inclined to deny statements that the majority know to be true, then Trump's message is appealing. By disputing facts and verifiable research, he validates society's fecklessness faction by speaking to people who, like him, can't be bothered to learn the facts.

But Trump's agnotology won't work in the real world of international politics, the economy and national security. In office, his merit badge of ignorance would tarnish pretty fast.

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